Tag Archives: transmedia

Identity, uncertainty and loss are explored in Scan through a combination of participation and projection.

Scan combines live performance, physical exploration of an unfamiliar space (lots of climbing up and down unlit stairs), and culminates in a dystopian “reveal” of surveillance footage, laser scanned images and movies. The culmination is delivered in a performance environment where the boundaries between performers, audience, technologists and observers are not so much blurred as destroyed.

Spot the scanner

Before we got to the big technological reveal, we were ‘rats in the maze’ of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama’s building – on the roof terrace, in staircases, store-rooms, subterranean pipe-filled rooms where the lights were put out for reasons that became clear on IR camera feed later! The performers escorting added to the feeling of being unsettled; they moved smoothly from personae as guides and reassuring presences – to quite scary officials – providing contradictory information about whether we were being “scanned” or not; arguing with one another about what needed to happen next.

The performers’ use of voice was impressive and, to my mind added greatly to the tension as we moved toward the final scenes. And one of them, from being a smooth-talking charming guide suddenly became a half-naked experimental subject in a theatre filled with audio announcements from bored officials concerning missing persons.

Some of the laser scanned images are of the participants/audience/experimental subjects shown in what I think of as “near realtime” – by that I mean content made so freshly that the paint has not yet dried; and the people in the room gasp as their laser-scanned simulacra are shown on a massive screen in front of them. Unsettling. And very impressive; to incorporate movies generated from laser scanned content less than 45 minutes from the start of the performance. The approach raises the level of risk – spotting Will Trossell at the keyboard manipulating the images and calmly driving the other 3D scanned imagery was, of course, how this risk was handled.

The really impressive elements of this performance centre on the manipulation of time. We were constantly being challenged with trying to understand whether what was happening was in realtime or not; did we really know what was going on, were we on camera, were we being ‘scanned’ – should we be worried? If we were being scanned – what did it mean?

So Bob Shiel and Jessica Bowles and their collaborators achieved a happening, an exploration of physical and virtual space, a performance and an experience of loss.

The Scan was performed as part of the Collisions Festival 2013 at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. There was one performance only. The work is the latest iteration of creative collaboration between the RCSSD and The Protoarchitecture Lab at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. In this instance, 3D scanning is introduced as a intermediary process that alters the observation of performance in time and space.

The Protoarchitecture Lab at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL is led by Bob Sheil and Emmanuel Vercruysse. Scan was created and devised in collaboration with Jessica Bowles of RCSSD, six recent graduates of RCSSD, ScanLAB projects and the artist collective SHUNT.

Sarah says that the project was much bigger than the video shown today. “It really punched above its weight”. The making of digital objects was an important act of the project – reflecting back progress.

Choreographic Objects: traces and artifacts of physical intelligence Principle and Co-Investigators: James Leach (Principle Investigator and Award Holder)Department of Anthropology, School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen Sarah Whatley (Co-Investigator)ceMAP, Coventry University Scott deLahunta (Research Fellow)ARTI, Amasterdam School for the Arts, NL Project Partners: Art Research, Theory and Innovation group, Amsterdam School for the Arts, NLWayne McGregor | Random DanceIntel, People and Practices Research Choreographic objects: traces and artefacts of physical intelligence is the title and focus of a series of three workshops centring on the output of four research teams working in collaboration with the choreographers William Forsythe, Siobhan Davies, Wayne McGregor and Emio Greco PC.

Paul talked about ephemera and digital objects such as the BBC indents (the hippos) and their relationship with RedBee media. He was very insightful on the dynamics of ephemeral content and the persistence in people’s minds not designed by its creators.

Clare Reddington says that the Digital Economy is a lot about enabling people to reconnect with the physical world with the help of digital technology. It’s about the layering and richness of experience. “We have to do better than Minority Report”. It’s about experiences. And the way digital changes the way we live. There is a speed function (cites Agile). Temporality and the creative economy.

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Good point well made by @clarered at #beyond text that digital economies are multiple economies. Not singular. #beyondtext

Sarah says we want more than the value of models and templates. We are seeing a proliferation. It’s also about engagement and values -both material and ethical. The future has to be about re-use of material. And new creation from combining these objects.

Paul Grainge says that he does not have a problem with the word content and there is ‘blurrring’ between disciplines.

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So @billt – is prepared to use the term “Digital Society” but not “Digital Economy” who knew? #beyondtext

Sarah says we are seeding the emergence of short-lived digital objects that don’t persist like photos or written documents.

Big discussions going on about archiving across different disciplines. And changes in the way archives are and can be used (such as pictures of children). And how about reputational issues of researchers ‘private’ notebooks.

Bill points out that the BBC has great difficulties in looking at the digitisation of archives and a ‘duty of care’ to the participants. The issue of online identity and provenance. How do you verify who can see it?

Andrew Burn – says that clearance has been an import aspect of his work especially about images of children. He agrees it needs to be handled carefully.

Until they got over the fear of the amateur, the funders found difficult to make progress

Rebekka says it’s interesting that there is a ‘where’ in e title of this session. Was what we did really radical – at music festivals; would it have been more radical at a shopping centre or in a University.

Rebekka says this is the first time she’s seen the video – it was e-mailed to her this morning.

Dani Salvadori says she sees convergence in the ‘college’ job at Central St Martins; whereas in her university job at University of the Arts she sees divergence. Companies and students coming together – not a hard sell on either side. On university side sees divergence – means dealing with Science and Technology – this is largely a b2b role.

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The most depressing meeting I’ve been to recently was the #cdec meeting says Dani Salvadore of CSM at #beyondtext

She says that there is too much operational thinking and British businesses risk being left behind. It’s not just business – it’s also in science, technology and engineering education – too narrow.

Jeremy Silver says I have two jobs too: advising the TSB on Creative Industries and trying to help get the money spent wisely. And the rest of the time he works with small companies helping them to do ‘real stuff’. And he says that we haven’t updated our definitions of the Creative Industries. And these don’t help – especially when the redefinitions of terms seem to reduce the size of the industry.

The main problem facing the industry is what Jeremy describes as the incumbents’ dilemma and their difficultly in working out how to change. Legislative change – says the Digital Economy Act drove people further apart.

We have an inexorable drive to be businesslike – but we don’t all have to be businesses – not everything can become a business. Let’s not force everything into becoming a business.

Sally Taylor says that she works between Universities and culture. The list of 13 captive industries has lasted since 1997 – and is probably in need of getting rid of. There is huge demand she says and more creative people working outside the creative industries than in. Need to talk about creative people. It’s a difficult game she says. But “it’s yours”.

TCCE had a conference on Creativity in Business recently. There are positive and negative aspects to creativity in business. Some of the positives are the world’s most iconic buildings.

The problems to deal with are about people; and academics have a role to play.

Where next for the creative industries? How about de-industrialisation. Let’s abolish or radically reduce copyright terms – make things move faster. Less agonistic and maybe more effective.

Jeremy thinks that reducing the term to 12 years would be interesting but the incumbents won’t go for it – implausible.

Rebekka questions the idea of deindustrialisation – and what it really means. Dani says it’s really happening and creation on the Internet is evidence of that. This country is “half deindustrialised” anyway.

Danger of programming in schools is that it will be pushed into ICT education and they will not realise that to make good computer games you needed to bring together music, narrative, writing etc.

Evelyn Wilson says we over fetishise the creative industries – the notion of boosterism cite by Kate Oakley. But what about what next for creativity?

Rebekka says there is no shared view of what ‘creativity’ means – don’t want a definition but the recognition that we are all on different pages.

Ghislaine Boddington says that internationally we have a good reputation and a very high level of quality for digital artists – it’s leading work worldwide. She mentions Creative Europe and the term Culture and Creative Sector – and says doesn’t mention “industry”.

One contributor says that we shouldn’t underestimate the impact of the English language. Dani says she doesn’t agree – most of the work is of a visual nature – language is not important.

We need the new stuff to come from creative work and be driven by that not led by industrial need.

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Sounds like the #beyondtext event was interesting lookin at tweets by @brian_condon @JeremyS1 @clarered

“There is no versioning – there is just the now” says Robert Henke; likening the true expression of digital music-making to the elder days of analogue mixing.

As tools and instruments overlap, what does that mean for how we generate music in the digital age using software?

He spoke insightfully, introduced by Gerhard Behles, another of the co-founders of Abelton, who also joined in the question session at the end of Robert’s prepared remarks.

And it was good thought-provoking stuff. But not one single musical example – which no-one seemed to find odd; and no examples of code or approaches to coding; ditto.

And a very interesting way of thinking about the issues – an expression of the psycho-philosophy of making music through coding – the constraints and complexity; inevitable compromises and how to code music without losing the point in the programming and the process.

Like this:

How do currents develop? How do we not lose stuff?
Where does everything go?

Artist Lanfranco Asceti gave a charming presentation on how, when we are creating a record in the flow of information through digital behaviour, we create the potential for conflicts with ‘real life’.

Lanfranco uses a transmedia artistic approach to investigate the intersections (or not) between the digital world and the real world.

His presentation began with a video made as part of his artistic process in seeing how messages are transmitted. “How can we understand the flows of messages?”. He has thrown a message in a bottle to his friend Henry Jenkins, a Professor at MIT, into the sea in Istanbul.

The question is?

Will Henry Jenkins hear about it?

The most compelling image for me is of the bottle being thrown into the harbour and then ‘bouncing’ back out and into the thrower’s hand. Made me think of e-mail bouncing or of servers being repeatedly ‘pinged’.

We are throwing bottles in the sea with a message to Henry Jenkins as well as throwing a message in the sea of the information of social networks on Facebook to see if Henry Jenkins will stumble upon the event online first or will receive the message in a bottle. The object of the game is to see if and how he will find out about the project.

I’ve also been thinking for a while now about ‘where do all the tweets go?’ and what ephemera now means in the Digital Age. And as the ‘digital noise’ in our social media environment increases how do we deal with what is likely to become a decreasing ‘signal to noise’ ratio. I see the development of new kinds of social media tools – ‘inference engines’ that help us to locate what they think we might be interested in. Prioritising our attention will become a key skill in digital engagement. Lanfranco suggests that the issue of voice and the need for a very varied network is important in ensuring that no one voice can speak with unquestioned authority. This will be an interesting and innovative driver of behaviours across the world.

Digital squatting the Googleplex –
artists occupying digital space

Lanfranco is also a ‘Digital Squatter’, running exhibitions on ‘Google’s territory’ in virtual space. Who owns the virtual space? Layering information over Googleplex. He also squatted at Tate Modern and a few others. Just to see what happened. You can find out about it here.

He argues that the ownership of digital space needs thinking about – and talked about how there are dangers in the alerting and reporting of activity in digital sapace, he says

“reporting” over the internet is the moral equivalent of the Stasi

And that we will all be turned into ‘digital informers’ as we monitor our digital ‘neighbours’ through our Net curtains. One to think about that.